visual stimming? Need an autistic perspective

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I do the eye flicker thing, too, though I never realised until now that NTs didn't! I generally do it when I'm trying to find a part of my brain. When there's too much information and I'm trying to find a common thread of it all, I start searching my memory and when I do that, my eyes twitch around, I've been told. I just never knew it wasn't normal before!

Who says? It's well known that even NTs move their eyes when thinking. Police are trained to watch for specific movements that indicate whether the person being interviewed is trying to recall a memory or fabricate a story. NTs typically look up/left for one and up/right for the other. It has to do with the fact that memory recall and story creation are performed by opposite brain lobes and the eyes show which lobe is being accessed.

Having said that, I also look up and rock my eyes left and right (like windshield wipers) sometimes just for pleasure.

Not quite sure exaclty what you were trying to say, with but Tourettes and the other tic disorders, the tics aren't exaclty the same as a normal muscular spasm. Like Sean said, they can be "put off" sometimes.

Tourette's Disorder

A. Both multiple motor and one or more vocal tics have been present at some time during the illness, although not necessarily concurrently. (A tic is a sudden, rapid, recurrent, nonrhythmic, stereotyped motor movement or vocalization.)

B. The tics occur many times a day (usually in bouts) nearly every day or intermittently throughout a period of more than 1 year, and during this period there was never a tic-free period of more than 3 consecutive months.

C. The onset is before 18 year.

D. The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., stimulants) or a general medical condition (e.g., Huntington's disease or postviral encephalitis).